The Beach at Trouville

Under Napoleon III, the beach at Trouville on the Normandy coast worked as a summer drawing room for Paris society, and this is the season of 1865. People came to sit by the sea fully dressed, the women in wide crinolines and bright shawls, the men in black coats and hats. Boudin painted them on a small sheet of cardboard about 40 centimetres wide and kept his viewpoint low. The sea shrinks to a thin strip behind the crowd, and the grey, streaked sky takes up more than half the picture. The people themselves are quick touches of colour, a red dress, a white skirt, a man standing stiffly in black. What Boudin was watching was the wind, pulling at the figures and at the small dark dog in the foreground. The picture entered the Louvre in 1932 as a bequest from Eugène Béjot, a Parisian etcher known for his views of the city.